During local contract negotiations in October 2013, Kellogg demanded the right to hire more part-time and casual employees, at lower pay rates. When workers voted the proposal down, Kellogg locked them out. Scabs hired through an Ohio union-busting firm now produce Frosted Flakes and Fruit Loops. About 60 percent of the Kellogg workers are black, matching the demographics of Memphis. But only 54 percent of black men in Memphis have jobs. The good-paying jobs at the Kellogg plant are a rarity.

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This lockout is now in its fourth month. You hear anything about it? I didn't, and I'm supposed to find stories like this. One of the louder tin drums I've been beating for years in my profession is the fact that all coverage of the economy is pretty much related to how the stock market is doing, and all the coverage of the effect of the economy on middle-class and poor people has been limited to sad stories devoid of context, like, for example, the effect on ordinary folks of the fact that hardly any industry is unionized any more. Labor used to be a beat on newspapers, before the newspapers themselves got taken over by representatives of the same corporate phylum that has done so much damage generally. People used to be "labor reporters." Stories like this get overlooked, except by the local media. They don't bubble up the way they once did.

Bradshaw says the lockout is part of a plan to make Kellogg union-free. "If we win in Memphis, they have to wait until the master contract expires to make these changes," he said. "If we lose in Memphis, it's going everywhere. Other companies are going to see it. General Mills has already called our international president and said, 'What are you doing about Kellogg?' He's thinking if Kellogg can do it, they can, too." The Memphis lockout is only the latest step in a series of increasingly hostile anti-union moves by Kellogg globally. Management recently announced that two union plants in Australia and Canada will close this year, and production will move to non-union facilities. Kellogg also recently shifted 58 million pounds per year of cereal production from Memphis to Mexico. Bradshaw said workers in Mexico are required to live in a housing compound near the factory and are bused to work. Some have been kidnapped by drug cartels. In 1996, more than 800 people worked at the Memphis facility. Now it stands just above 200. Much of the work is automated.

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Is Kellogg's suffering from economic reversals that make "sacrifices" necessary? Does everybody need to have "skin in the game"?

Of course, not.

It's all about the casino.

While the company has not lost money, it has time fallen short of making the profits expected by shareholders and industry analysts on Wall Street. As a result, Kellogg has tried to increase cereal sales as people move toward on-the-go meals in the mornings. General Mills, which makes Cheerios, is facing a similar problem and is deploying a variety of tactics such as marketing children's cereal to adults. For the three-month period that ended June 29, Kellogg reported profits of $352 million on $3.7 billion in revenue. In the same months a year earlier, profits totaled $324 million on $3.4 billion in revenue.

You are doing another thing. You are reminding, not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. I need not remind you that this is the plight of our people all over America. The vast majority of Negroes in our country are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. My friends, we are living as a people in a literal depression. Now you know when there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the black community, they call it a social problem. When there is vast unemployment and underemployment in the white community they call it a depression. But we find ourselves living in a literal depression all over this country as a people.

A little short of a month later, somebody in Memphis shot him in the head.